Workshops
The Writing Workshop offered by the Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric & Composition will be held Saturday afternoon, from 2:00 to 5:00. All other workshops (except those in the Community track) will be held Friday afternoon, from 2:00 to 3:15.
Writing Workshop
The Coalition of Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric
& Composition
Saturday, October 10th, 2-5 PM
The Coalition of Women Scholars is hosting its first Writing Workshop, designed to help young scholars revise drafts for journal publication. The workshop will follow a standard writing workshop procedure. Authors will submit journal article drafts ahead of time for review. At the workshop, groups, lead by a scholar experienced in writing, editing, and/or publishing, will provide feedback to the author. Confirmed group leaders include Melissa Ianetta, Lynee Gaillet, Carrie Leverenz, Will Banks, and Wendy Sharer. (Others have been asked, but haven't confirmed yet.)
The workshop is limited to 24-28 people and functions on a first-come/first-serve basis.
Feminist Rhetorics of Community-Based Literacies
A Zine-Making Workshop
In this hands-on zine-making workshop, participants will be guided through drawing, collage making, and writing exercises. We will reflect on our diverse experiences with community-based literacies, as well as the challenges and possibilities inherent in connecting community-based literacy projects with academic literacy research or scholarship.
The workshop is open to anyone interested in using creative expression to explore questions about linking community-based literacy and academic work, regardless of familiarity with zine-making. Everyone will be given the option to share contributions to a zine we create together on the spot.
For more information contact Pamela VanHaitsma (pamvanhaitsma@yahoo.com).
Am I Overcompensating for Something?
Perceiving Complexities of the Feminist Teacher
Challenges faced by those practicing feminine teaching methods have been well established in theoretical discussions. This workshop will focus on three major areas: defining how the feminist teacher is perceived, discussing how members of the feminist community are complicit in those definitions, and reflecting on what can be done in the future to change unwanted perceptions and limit anxiety associated with them. Participants will be asked to examine how their own perceptions affect their classrooms to ultimately share and gain advice for fostering a positive environment in the classroom.
For more information contact Janelle Wiess, University of Michigan-Flint (jwiess@umflint.edu).
Feminist Historiography
A Collaborative Workshop
At this collaborative and interactive workshop, participants will share in the articulation and exploration of feminist historiographic goals and methods. We have seen twenty years of sustained efforts in developing feminist studies in the history of rhetoric, composition, and literacy. Have shared and diverse paradigms emerged from this work and from our own efforts that are on-going? We will share our scholarly stories of feminist work and our present questions about what it means to be a feminist historian in our field.
Feminist Pedagogy
What Did We Want, Why Did We Want It, and Did We Get It?
We invite participants to explore connections between feminist theories and the pedagogy of the college writing classroom. We want to investigate what is valued as "academic discourse" in order to discover whether or not the influence of feminist theory has significantly altered our relationship with our students and the texts they construct.
Rhetorics of Restoration
Exploring Feminist Approaches to and Engagement with Community Restorative Justice Programs
This workshop is designed to acquaint participants with and generate more feminist engagement in alternative criminal justice programs in our communities. We will identify ways that we can incorporate a feminist-informed restorative justice stance to strengthen connections between our work in the academy and the communities where we live.
For more information contact Jennifer Wood, Penn State New Kensington (jkw7@psu.edu).
Enabling Participations
Art Spaces on Site
In On Not Being Able to Paint Joanna Fields explores the ways that a failure to express, externalize, abstract plays itself out on our psyches. This failure creates/favors pathways to subjectivity that foster passivity and aggression. The activity we propose gives conference participants the chance to use computers, video, digital cameras, and paint and canvas to abstract their conference experiences. The Writing in Digital Environments Research center (WIDE) workroom and hallway will be used to create space for these activities. Members of this performance panel will include undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and community artists; they will staff the area at specific times to facilitate conference attendees participation. The art produced will be organized into a digital format and made available to the coalition for use on their website. It will also be available on the WIDE webpage.
For more information contact Nancy DeJoy, Michigan State University (nancydejoy@gmail.com).
Glorious Noise
An exploratory act of establishing pathways
Glorious Noise is a performance based collaborative writing project blurring boundaries between speech and writing, public and private, spectator and subject. Workshop invites participants to contribute writing and text to an on-time feminist rhetoric. All material produced during the workshop to be published online.
For more information contact Daisy Levy, Michigan State University (levyd@msu.edu).
The Anarcha Project
Black Culture / Crip Culture
The Anarcha Project was a collaborative performance project that evoked haunting memories of three Alabama slave women who in the 1840s persevered through years of medical experimentation at the hands of J. Marion Sims, "the father of gynecology."
In the presentation, I will use an alternative method to share what happened, and to highlight the collaborative working process: I will hand out statements, poetry, fragments of writing by workshop participants, and ask the audience to take these words into their own mouths, creating a communal performance that keeps medical detail private, and attempts to avoid both re-victimisation and hagiography.
For more information contact Petra Kuppers, University of Michigan (petra@umich.edu). You may also want to look at the Anarcha Anti-Archive.
Events
Community Poetry Reading and Open Mic Event
Thursday, October 8th
8 PM (doors open at 7:30)
(SCENE) Metrospace110 Charles Street
Downtown East Lansing
Please join us for a Community Poetry Reading hosted by the 2009 Feminims and Rhetorics Conference and the Residential College in Arts and Humanities Center for Poetry. We'll bring together students, community members, and faculty from the Greater Lansing area to share their poetry with the larger community—and with attendees of the national 2009 Fem/Rhet Conference. Following the reading, have your say during open mic time for other interested readers! Both readers and listeners from the community are encouraged to attend.
Ruelaine Stokes, from Lansing's Old Town Poets Society, will be our MC for the evening.
The RCAH Center for Poetry officially opened on October 23, 2007 with a reading by esteemed MSU and RCAH poet Anita Skeen. Each semester, the Center hosts visiting poets who give readings and engage with students and community members on, and off campus. The Center has also sponsors a number of events including slams, poetry chalkings, writing workshops, and scholarly lectures on poetry.
The mission of the RCAH Center for Poetry is to encourage the reading, writing, and discussion of poetry and to create an awareness of its place and power in our everyday lives.
This event is free and open to the public; conference registration is not required. There will be open mic time available to all attendees following the scheduled readings.
Community Connections
The conference is hosting a series of Community Connections events, including presentations, workshops, and a networking event. The following is a brief list; click here for more information.
A Legacy of Conflict & Possibility
An Examination of Racism Between Women of Color & White
Women
Thursday October 8th, 8-9:30 AM
Carmen Lane, Lane Leota Group
Learn About the Michigan Women's Hall of Fame
Thursday October 8th, 10:30 AM - 12 PM
Sandy Soifer, Michigan Women's Hall of Fame
Place-based Community Organizing and the Leadership Role of Women
Thursday October 8th, 2-3:30 PM
Joan Nelson, Allen Neighborhood Center
Building a Collaborative Community
Using Decentered Organizing Techniques for Social Change
Friday October 9th, 8-9:30 AM
Peggy Roberts, Power of We
The Women's Center of Greater Lansing Working toward women's economic equality on the grassroots level
Friday October 9th, 10:30 AM - 12 PM
Cindie Alwood and Manuela Kress, Women's Center of Greater Lansing
What's Community Got To Do With It?
Friday October 9th, 2-3:30 PM
Penny Gardner, Coalition for Adoption Rights Equality;
Alicia Paterni, Michigan Works; Dessa Cosma, Planned Parenthood;
Bernadette Brown, Triangle Foundation
Community Networking Event
Friday October 9th, 4-5:30 PM
This event is free and open to the public; conference registration is not required.
Domestic Violence
Digging Deep Determines Destinies
Saturday October 10th, 10:30 AM - 12 PM
Rina Risper, Eve's House
Pre, Mid, and Post Incarceration
The struggle of womyn advocating for their incarcerated loved one
Saturday October 10th, 2-3:30 PM
Maria Zavala, Northwest Initiative; Velia Koppenhoefer;
Monica Jahner, Northwest Initiative
